A few specific things are important in my search. My highest priorities are support for Gmail labels and stars, multiple-account support, sorting options, and, if possible, a pleasing interface. Of these, strong support for Gmail labelling is the most important, as I use it to manage an overwhelming amount of communication.

Here’s what I found.

Apps That Didn’t Make the Cut

First, let’s take a quick look at which desktop clients aren’t in this review. There are a few notable ones here, and I’ll address them quickly. I didn’t include Apple MailHow to Make Apple Mail a Better Desktop Email ClientHow to Make Apple Mail a Better Desktop Email ClientTake the time to set up Apple's boring email client just right, and make email processing as painless as possible.Read More, because it just doesn’t work all that well with Gmail. You can copy emails to folders to mimic the labelling functionality, but there’s no way to label an email and leave it in your inbox. It works, but it’s not great.

Inky, Thunderbird, and MailPilot weren’t included because they don’t have label support. To be fair, some of the apps below aren’t great with labels either. But they have some cool features that seem worth including. MailPlane and Kiwi are just the browser interface taken out of your browser. Boxy is the same, but for Inbox.

I’m sure there are others out there. If you’re foaming at the mouth because I missed something, let me know in the comments.

Although all of the apps listed here are purported to work well with Gmail, AirmailAirmail for Mac OS X Is Making Email Beautiful AgainAirmail for Mac OS X Is Making Email Beautiful AgainWhen I first heard of Airmail, I must admit I questioned if I really needed a new way to check my email. Like many people, Mail.app satisfied all of my email requirements, and I struggled...Read More was clearly designed from the ground up with it in mind. For example, it’s easy to label and archive messages. And it’s possible to label messages without archiving them. This is a rare feature outside of the browser interface, and can be extremely useful.

Because this app integrates so well with Gmail, you can use the Gmail or Inbox mobile apps without messing up labels, stars, or archiving. Airmail also has an iOS app, available for $5, but the desktop app’s perfect sync capabilities mean you don’t need to buy it if you’re happy with one of Gmail’s native options. I’m currently using Airmail on my Mac and Inbox on my phone, and it works very well.

This “people-centric” app places a strong emphasis on the idea of natural conversation in email. In order to do this, your emails are grouped by person instead of by conversation. You can still view your email conversations if you need to, though. While I found this method of organization difficult to get used to, some will find it natural.

I ran into a couple small snags while testing Unibox. For example, some emails that I had previously archived were showing up in my unified inbox. I also found that the app uses folders instead of labels. When you select “Move To,” the message is archived with a specific label. So my system of labeling items in the inbox isn’t supported.

That being said, anyone looking for a client that organizes mail by contacts should check out Unibox. The interface is very minimal and stays out of your way, it’s easy to set up, and does its job.

Postbox provides solutions to most of the problems Gmail users will be looking for. The interface is fairly minimal, and provides a lot of shortcuts for getting to specific sets of emails. The focus pane lets you get to specific tags (not labels) quickly, as well as filters by things like “has attachment” and “subscription.”

Unfortunately, there’s no support for labels. As with most desktop clients, they’re simply treated as folders, and when you assign a folder, the email is archived. You can add Topics, which function sort of like labels, but you’ll need to customize the list; it’s not imported from your labels in Gmail. And they aren’t displayed especially well.

Beyond the lack of good label support, this is a good option that will let you work through your email quickly. You can also use Gmail keyboard shortcuts, which will help longtime Gmail users adjust. Is it worth $40? Unless you really love the tagging and focus pane, probably not.

This is billed as an email client for power users; customizable keyboard shortcuts, Markdown capabilityLearning Markdown: Write For The Web, FasterLearning Markdown: Write For The Web, FasterMarkdown is the best way to write in plain text but still create complex documents. Unlike HTML or LaTex, for example, Markdown is simple to learn.Read More, advanced search and smart mailboxes, encryption, and a host of other features make this one of the most capable email clients out there. It’s not especially intuitive, but once you learn it, it can be a very powerful way to manage your communications.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t get it to connect to my Gmail account, so I can’t tell you a whole lot about it. Many of our readers recommend MailMate, and say that it’s worth the hefty price tag. Like Postbox, you can’t directly use your Gmail labels, but you can tag your messages and deal with them that way.

Conclusion

After this search and a lot of testing, Airmail is the app I’ll be using on my own desktop. The fact that it works so seamlessly with Gmail sets it clearly above the other options. If you want a desktop client for Gmail, it’s absolutely worth $10.

Do you use a desktop client for Gmail, or do you prefer webmail? Which clients have you tried? Share your experiences in the comments below!

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Slava

May 17, 2017 at 8:13 am

Just discovered another GMail client named Nylas-Mail https://nylas.com/nylas-mail/
It is free and opensource https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail
BUT, and for me is a bit concerning because there are quite a few issues regarding privacy and security.
The team of Nylas seems to calm everyone by saying that data is not shared as long as you're a free user yet people dont trust that completely and provide other proofs.
Basically you have to sign up to their service in order to use the mail client hence the concerns.

Interesting! Looks like a marketing-focused email client. Not sure how useful all of those features are, but it's definitely an intriguing option. Privacy and security issues are always concerning, though; where have you seen people voice those concerns?

A slight correction to my post.
Dont use this client/product anymore. The project has beed dropped and cancelled.
You can read a little about it here https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail/issues/3564
It does seems that several github users decided to fork the project and work on it but it will probably take quite some time before it will be really usable.

Whoa. These comments go back pretty far. I'm impressed that Mr. Albright is still providing feedback.

I checked out the reviews of Airmail in the app store. They're bad enough that I wouldn't have even considered downloading it had I not read this review first. I can't tell if reviewers are focusing on minutiae that's irrelevant for the average user, if they're frustrated with the learning curve required for a new program, if these issues apply to every email client and this is just the best we can hope for right now, or if their concerns are indeed legitimate and they're right to complain.

Wow—didn't realize I'd been responding to comments on this article for over two years! I haven't looked at the app store reviews of Airmail, but now I'm very curious as to what could be causing them. All I can speak to is my own experience of the app, and I'm still using it, so I definitely recommend it.

I like Airmail in concept and it does align with Gmail well. The thing that keeps me from using it regularly is the search is not sortable. You can choose a sort, but it ignores it. There several other examples where things don't quite work as expected (and the documentation doesn't explain them), that could be driving some of the user disappointment..

My needs seem to differ a bit: I actually prefer "filing" my messages into folders rather than labeling, and just need something that is fast and doesn't "break" gmail. Interface-wise, I actually prefer Apple Mail over most clients, but it can be randomly slow with Gmail and is a real pain to deal with if you take a long time composing a message -- mainly because you end up with multiple draft copies sitting in your drafts folder. You can get around that issue by setting your Drafts to be use a local folder instead of syncing with Gmail, but that becomes an issue if you use multiple computers (since that draft you were working on at your desktop will not be synced to your laptop or mobile device).

I've tried a handful of alternative apps, but seem to keep running into one of two main issues:
1. Many older apps that tout themselves as made-for-Gmail are just browser wrappers for the web client. There was one specifically that was literally running an instance of Chrome behind the interface, and killed my laptop battery as a result. While I actually prefer Chrome for some uses, I try to avoid using it on my laptop because it is so resource heavy; I get MUCH better battery life if I use Safari for most of my web browsing.
2. I hate preview panes, but many of these apps give no option to avoid using them. I know I'm old-school in this, but I prefer to just see my folder on the left and a list of messages on the right -- with mail messages opening in a separate window. I really like the functionality and interface of Spark (which is my default mail client on iOS), but the macOS client refuses to let you work without the preview pane.

For now, I keep waffling back and forth between Apple Mail and Gmail's web interface (Outlook 2016 is decent, but I reserve that for my work's Exchange account as I accidentally emailed my boss from my Gmail too many times with them integrated haha). If Apple Mail would just fix the Drafts folder issue, or if Spark let me get rid of the preview pane, I'd probably settle on one of those. Until then, I'm still searching...

If you like filing, then you definitely don't need a client that works well with Gmail . . . in which case, Apple Mail is a great choice. The drafts issue is interesting; I've never run across that before. It sounds pretty annoying! Have you tried Airmail? You could just not use the labels in the standard Gmail way; I think it would still probably work. Not sure about the preview pane, though.

I've been trying to find a decent Gmail desktop app for over 18 months now. I wanted to change the way I organise my email and foud Postbox, then I discovered the fact it didn't support labels and I had big problems with it crashing, so was pretty annoyed at the fact I had set up all my topics and then wasted a lot of time. Having recently subscribed to Office 365, I decided to give Outlook a try... after 3 months I'm not liking it much as no label support and now I'm moving to another Mac, so its time to try something better.

Does Spark really support gmail labels? I've read reports that it imports labels from gmail but doesn't allow the creation of new labels. ...and how does it handle folders and labels simultaneously? (I.e. how would it know which gmail labels should behave as folders and which should behave as labels?)

I haven't tried to enable 2FA on Airmail, but their FAQ says that it will work with Hotmail . . . not sure if that means Gmail will be coming soon, or is already available. Have you tried using it with non-Okta 2FA? Google's native option, maybe?

I'm concerned about security with Airmail, I'm using the Airmail beta version for testing v 2.6. It automatically configured my gmail, iCloud and another IMAP account and I'm not sure the security configuration for my accounts is sending out my password in clear text or encrypted: incoming server security set to "NONE" for iCloud, “PLAIN" for my imap account and “LOGIN” for gmail account. Anyone know if this app is sending out credentials securely?

No mention of the fact that Airmail still doesn't support Google's mail tabs (Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates), which makes Airmail pretty useless if you've been using Gmail web interface or something like Mailplane.

I have used that functionality but it works rather strange. When you move a mail to another account the original date of the mail gets replaced by the date of moving. Have you had this experience as well?

Dann Albright

February 24, 2016 at 12:14 am

I just tested, and it does do that. It makes sense that the latest email would get an updated date, as it's like forwarding that email to the receiving account, but I'm not sure why all the rest of the entries in the conversation get updated. I'll see if I can find out why that happens!

Steve

February 24, 2016 at 7:47 pm

It does yes

Fay Kelley

January 4, 2016 at 4:45 am

Thunderbird worked fine for both POP Earthlink AND IMAP Google for a few days ... then it won't download gMail.

I have not used Thunderbird before and I find I can have mailBox for both POP and IMAP. I am in the process of setting up multiple accounts.

I don't know how easy it is to set up mail boxes yet. MacMail compared to Eudora is a pain, but at least I can retrieve both POP and IMAP on MacMail.

Because of my experience with mail clients failing at some point, or the server won't deliver to some mail clients, and not to others for a period of time, I need to have my mail backed up in various places to be bullet proof.

I'll see how this goes ... Unfortunately Thunderbird does not work on iPhone ...

I was hoping to find a mail client to use on both iPhone and the MacBook Pros that i have. I'm still waiting for someone to design a mail client as robust and flexible as Eudora. If you did not use it to it's full capacity over a period of years, it is hard to understand the robust capabilities ... I have Eudora on another computer running Snow Leopard just so that I can find the mail I need, but I can't trust that old computer to do run the art applications because it is too small HD.

Funny to see someone mention good ol' Eudora. Love of my email life. People have absolutely -no- idea of what they are missing with this mail client. Of course - if you don't live, breath, eat, and die by information, then it doesn't matter. But for those of us that do/did, Eudora is sort of like the Moon space program. Cost enormous amounts of money to make, was built insanely well, and had capabilities that are no longer existent or even understood.
All of these current clients are missing robust search functions that let you sort and search years and tens of thousands of emails in an intelligent and refined way. This is critical when you need to pull out old information with just a single possible keyword.
So critical, I run a VMWare Snow Leopard 10.6 session on my Yosemite OS mac. It's a crazy thing to do, but for some of us, our email boxes are like mind maps - like cybernetic memories. And Eudora dying is like a burnt out chip implant in our brains - unupgradable, unfixable, debilitating and painful - since no one was -capable- of building anything like it with a cheap 'freemium' biz model.
How the hell did email become so depreciated that nobody knows what a real email client could actually be capable of? Apple mail is almost worthless. I understand this, as Apple leaves real client software efforts to real developers. But it seems building something the magnitude of Eudora is not something a few 20 something devs using github, grubhub, Soylent, and caffeine can pound out in a few sweaty equity months, so we have toys that are bought and killed by Acme MegaCorp if they remotely start to function. Craaaazy man...

I would not have discovered MailMate without this article. I just downloaded the 30-day full trial.

I gotta say I really like it. It automatically set up and downloaded 8 mailboxes based upon what I had in Mac Mail.

I'm reading the "instructions" my only questions is can I download earthlink mail as well like I can in Mac Mail.

This is a really really fine mail client. If I can't find something that functions with gMail as well as this, I might spring for the $49 ...which is something we really cannot afford at this time, but I can't be using a web server browser screen for mail at this point during my life, LOL.

Thanks again for the article ! In the meanwhile I'll check out some of the others.

Apologies, I'm so annoyed with my lack of downloading gMail that I completely forgot to THANK YOU for the wonderful research ... I'll give a few a try ... but please peeps, forget PostBox. Very unreliable.

PostBox *used* to work with gMail ... I have spent months trying to get it to work and it will not.

I use MacMail as it will download both Earthlink and gMail ... however now THAT will now download gMail either!

So I'm looking for a mail client to use as a backup for my gMail mail. It goes to the iPhone but not Mavericks desktop. This is very frustrating as I backup my Hubby's mail on my Mac and now his Google mail has been lost several times and I have no backup.

I want a mail client that LOOKS and WORKS like Eudora ... that I can write scripts for and have a ROBUST mail client like that. One that never fails and for me -- I hate stars, personalities, and all that garbage.

I want a regular dependable mail client that will down load for IMAP and POP and will do stuff in folders like Mac Mail and Eudora but will ALWAYS work with gMail.

DropBox is owned by relation to Bush ... no wonder peeps were saying that DropBox is not secure !

I guess I'll have to wait for the reincarnation of Eudora or a different MacMail ....

Thank goodness I never gave up my Earthlink emails (almost 20 years) for that stupid free gMail as they keep blocking my downloads when I have never asked for that and it seems almost impossible to get them running again. It worked for a year and then nothing. No matter how many times I delete an account, change the password, etc. etc.

We need some creative programs who will do a labor of love and create an AWESOME mail client.

I totally agree that someone needs to come up with an awesome client—as I've mentioned numerous times in the article and the comments, I love Airmail, and it keeps getting better. But I think there's still a lot of room for improvement, and email clients are definitely ripe for disruption (can't believe I just used that phrase). Gmail's Inbox is a great example of thinking about email differently, and if more people start thinking that way, we could definitely see some big improvements in how we deal with email clients. I hope you find a good solution—be sure to keep us posted!

Geez, I guess desktop email apps are just out of style on Windows and Mac. I'm not crazy about any of these.

Postbox looks good, but it has gone up to $15. That seems like a lot considering probably 80% of the code came to them at no charge.

I was entertained by the Condoleezza Rice comment considering the context of this article: GOOGLE mail clients. Worrying about privacy in Mailbox is like going back into a burning house to see if you left the oven on.

I've come to really like Airmail, and I'm hoping to try Mailbox in the near future, but I can see why you're not super impressed. Most of the functionality is easy to get from a browser window; I just like to be able to do some of it offline and to not keep an extra tab open.

Also, if apps were priced based on how much of the code was developed in-house, pricing for pretty much everything would be WAY different. And a lot of companies would probably be out of business, leaving us without a lot of fantastic apps. :-)

In my experience, Mail isn't great with Gmail. One big feature that it's missing is the ability to apply a label to an email in the inbox. In Mail—at least last time I checked—if you put an item in a folder, it would disappear from your inbox. In-inbox labelling is one of the things I like most about Gmail.

You know, I think I tried that when it was Gmail for Mac. I wasn't super impressed, only because I could have just opened a new browser window and achieved the same effect. Do you use it? Do you like it? I'm curious as to what advantages it offers!

Thanks for your review. I am going to buy Airmail because you mentioned the one feature that I really want and have not been able to find: the ability to label a message without archiving it. I have tried Mailbox, Outlook, and Postbox.

The ability to label without archiving is essential for my workflow, and Airmail handles it very well. It's still a little buggy at times, but I haven't come across anything deal-breaking. Hope you like it!

I've been using the Gmail web app for about 6-7 years now, but since became a freelancer I travel so much, I felt I needed a desktop client so I could work offline at airports, on trains, etc.

I've tried out a few options above but none was perfect:

Mailbox: really like the simplicity and the interface, but for some weird reason, it didn't mirror the current state of my (empty) Gmail inbox, hence I had 4200 unread messages, which isn't very helpful.

Airmail: like the interface, but when I tried to work offline, annoying messages popped up that it couldn't send the messages. More annoyingly, it doesn't offer the not very complicated outbox feature, so all the unsent messages were categorised as 'Drafts' and I had to send them manually, once I had connection again.

Postbox: ruled it out as you have to decrease the security of your gmail account, which I was not willing to do.

Have you tried using the Gmail Offline extension for Chrome? That might solve at least some of the problems that you're having. I don't like it all that much (partly because it's really ugly, or was the last time I used it), but it might meet more of your needs than the clients that you've tried.

I agree with the Airmail annoyance; getting all of those warnings is irritating. It's been a long time since I've had to send an email when offline, so I don't remember having to go back into drafts, but that would be really inconvenient, too!

What's the best solution that you've found so far? I'm still using Airmail 2, which has been working really well for me. I try to keep an eye out on email client releases, but I haven't seen anything else come out recently.

I used to use the Offline extension, but I got fed up with it, as very often it wouldn't work when I was offline. And you are right, visually it is rather unpleasant, but I could live with it if it worked.

I ended up with Mailbox, which has a few annoying, beta-related niggles (clicking on links freezes the software, archiving sometimes doesn't work, etc.), but I really like the ease of use, the clean interface and the 'Later' option.

I'm conscious of the fact that I might end up using an inferior product out of convenience and there might be other, better options out there, so I guess I'll keep an eye on things, too :)

Sounds like Mailbox is working alright for you! I haven't checked out the beta yet, but I'm tempted to give it a shot; I like Mailbox on iOS, and I don't see why it wouldn't be a great option on OS X as well. Maybe I'll wait until those beta bugs are sorted out, though. :-)

carri bugbee

November 20, 2015 at 12:24 am

Now that it has been a few months, how has Mailbox worked out for you? Being able to get things accomplished while offline is one of the main reasons why I don't use Webmail. That can really boost productivity while you're on the road.

I've been using Apple Mail for everything (including Gmail) over the years, but now that I'm collecting emails from 10+ mailboxes, the volume has really bogged down the app. I keep deleting, but it's problematic to have tens of thousands of emails.

I want to separate my Gmails from my domain emails, which I've already done on iOS devices w/ the Gmail app. Now I'm looking for the best email client for Gmail on the desktop!

I am looking for another email program to use. I have been using Thunderbird for nearly 10 years, on a PC and now on a Mac Book Air, for the last 3 years.. I have been very happy with Thunderbird and would still use it, if it would operate correctly with the new apple update OS X Yosemite. Since I downloaded OS X, Sending a photo with Thunderbird can no longer happen.. Apple have made the files where your photo are kept, very hard to find for Thunderbird.. In fact the photo file that TB tries to find isn't there.. As TB is so old and OS X so new the, it seems they have different ways of finding things.. I'm not very happy with the way Photos in OS X has sorted out my files a lot more work and harder to move photos around. In time we will all get use to using Photos but in the mean time there will be a lot of unhappy people.. Has any body else had trouble with OS X trying to email photos?

Looking at some of the other email programs no one has mentioned emailing photos?

That's interesting–I hadn't heard of that issue before. If you email a lot of photos, I can see why that would be irritating! Have you tried sharing from within the Photos app? (I haven't used it much, so I can't say if that's a good way to go, but it might work.)

As for apps that work well with photos, I'll have to defer to the other readers here; I don't send all that many photos, and I've never had trouble with Airmail (and didn't with Sparrow before it). Maybe download a free trial of an app or two and see if it works better?

First off, thanks for the post. I am not a experienced user per say, and i think my needs are fairly simple. I have only one gmail account that i want to link to my mail app, so labelling may not be a priority. I need it to be very user friendly and stable, and easy to archive messages.

I tried Outlook for Mac, but I kept receiving the same e-mails two to three times, and couldn't find a way to eliminate that. Sometimes I received e-mails on the web, and not in outlook...

I tried the original Mail app for Mac, but i never could figure out a proper way to install the account and synchronize everything.

I am now using Thunderbird, but it is a bit problematic not to be able to see event invitations. And it now seems to be a bit unstable (a lot of application memory problems...)

I am starting to think the only stable option is the web based gmail, but as others were saying: it is not fantastic...

Gmail Offline is a reasonable suggestion, but I have not tried it. If it's anything like normal Gmail web client, it would not meet my wishes, which are:
* Integrated work and home email accounts
* Introspect dates, addresses in mail body to auto-create events and contacts when you rollover (I think only Air Mail and Apple Mail do this).
* Archive messages to local storage where they are still searchable
* Sort mail lists by to, from, status, attachment, etc.
* Include mail in OS X Spotlight searches (often finds things I wasn't expecting to find in email)
* Its hard to copy text (like subjects) when everything is a link.
* I reserve Chrome for Flash content browsing only. Flash is not installed in OS X, for efficiency and extra security. http://daringfireball.net/2010/11/flash_free_and_cheating_with_google_chrome (or Google "gruber flash chrome")

To resolve slowness, I'm paring down my gmail archive, and upgraded to Yosemite last night.

Because we use email so much, the user interface and UX is critical and personal. Everybody can find something that works for them, and choice is great! Which is why this comment thread could go on forever :-)

I used Airmail for about half a year, with an Exchange account and two Gmail accounts. It did a good job with Exchange as well. In the end, though, the way it would file my sent mail item in a conversation along with a reply, when I only wanted to file the reply, was a deal-breaker. Did you notice this or find a workaround?

I'm back on Apple Mail, although having severe performance problems due to Gmail's seem tendency to archive everything, even though I've set Mail to trash-not-archive mode. At about 50,000 items, Mail can't keep up.

(I love how the conversation here has continued over time. I'm always finding pieces like this via Google search, and extended commenting is increasingly rare. Nice job on the replies.)

I'm glad you've found this extended discussion helpful! We have a great community of writers and readers here, and we try to keep up with these things as they evolve.

Anyway, I think I know what you mean about filing a sent item in the conversation, though that's something that I haven't tried to find a workaround for. I like having as many pieces of the conversation as possible visible when I open a message thread. As far as I know, there isn't a way to only view the replies. The guys at Airmail might know, though (I'll see if I can get a hold of them and find out).

And while I don't use Apple Mail, I can see why it would get slowed down after a while. 50,000 items is a lot, and archiving instead of deleting things (as Gmail is built to do) can be a pain. Have you tried the Gmail Offline extension for Chrome? I like the webmail interface for Gmail, and the extension lets you use it offline (though it's pretty ugly).

I was not a fan of the Bush administration but your assertion that Condoleezza Rice's being on the board of DropBox makes people nervous about using Mailbox is just plain stupid. You're either a bald-faced liar or an utter idiot. Seriously, do you think she's sitting in board meetings saying stuff like, "Let's loosen up security controls in Mailbox to make it easier for us and the government to snoop on people."? No, I don't work for those companies. I have no vested interest in the product. I don't even like Rice.

Shawna, because I don't recognize your name and this is our first interaction (at least that I remember), I'm going to leave your comment up on this page. In the future, if you personally attack authors on this site in the manner that you've done here, your comments will be deleted. We're all for disagreement and debate, but we also expect commenters to act like adults.

Anyway, if you read the article again, you'll see that I didn't say that people should be worried about Rice being on the Dropbox board. Only that some people are. There's an entire site dedicated to this idea (drop-dropbox.com). PCWorld, The Guardian, BBC, and Wired have all reported on this particular issue. You can think what you want about me, Rice, and Dropbox, but this is an issue that people care about. So call me a liar if you want, but if you do, just remember that you're also calling all of those (generally pretty well-regarded) publications liars as well.

Yeah, as much as I've come to like Airmail, I'd still prefer Sparrow to be under development. I'm so surprised that Google bought it and shut it down; there's a big fanbase. Very disappointing. Anyway, not a lot we can do about it!

Exactly. Sparrow was the best client. I would still continue to use it but Sparrow started to act weird. When I send an e-mail to my domain's email from my Gmail's address it is rejected by secureserver.net (GoDaddy server). And if I send the same email from Google web interface or Apple Mail it works fine.

I have no idea why Sparrow started to use GoDaddy smtp server or what other reason for this behaviour. It seems I just have to withdraw Sparrow and it's really pity.

It was a bad choice for Sparrow team to cancel Sparrow support the next day the got money from Google. Funny thing I have bought Sparrow for Mac and just next day they announced it's over ;)

Ah, sorry to hear that it's started acting up. It was bound to happen sometime. That's really bad luck that you bought it right before they announced its demise! I keep hoping that Google might resurrect it, but that's seeming less and less likely. I don't know why they shut it down. To keep it from competing with browser-based Gmail, maybe?

Note that Outlook for Mac works differently than the version under Office 365. Regular Outlook for Mac will sync calendar and contacts, where the 365 version requires Exchange to do so. I thought that might need to be clarified.

I saw the comment on Outlook for Mac. I wouldn't have gone to it but with my frustration with Mail and my wife getting a Office 365 subscription with her new Surface I decided to give it a go. Microsoft support tells me that gmail calendar and contacts will not sync without Google creating an Exchange account for my gmail to flow through. Ive never used Exchange, except when dealing with my employers email, so Im wondering if they will want to charge me for it. If so, I may abandon Outlook and come back to this article to choose another client. Good list here. Thanks

Ah, that's interesting. I've never been a huge fan of Outlook, but it is a pretty popular client, so you might find that you like it. Keep us updated on how you're liking it! I'm always interested in hearing what people use for email on Mac, as it's tough to find a client that works for everyone. But if you do decide to switch to something else, I recommend Airmail.

Hi Mike and Dann,
I just trialed and then started an install of Office 365, with Google Apps support on the phone, and just as I was ready to hit "go", he found a major problem: Outlook for Mac 2011 AND Office 365 do not support aliases. That's it; game over for me!Really bummed.

Gmail for Mac (by Zive) is supposed to be released soon. It looks very promising, although I can't imagine they'll be allowed to keep that name. I'm currently a Postbox user, have been for many years, and is my preferred client. While not quite as visually appealing as others, it's customizability and functionality are above and beyond the competition. Works flawlessly with Gmail, labels, etc. and even allows Gmail shortcuts (to some extent).

I just installed MailMate and must admit I'm impressed. The scope of Smart Folder options makes it a very powerful tool for message grouping/processing. $50 is hardly expensive for a piece of software that is used daily and increases productivity through its feature set. 10 cups of Starbucks. 5 fast food meals. A tank of gas. I mean, seriously.

Unfortunately Postbox has been decreasing in usability for a while now. Over the last three months especially it's been crashing about 6 times a day, freezing a lot and just generally being really shitty. I've stopped using it - decrease in work output due to constant restarts, having to rewrite emails, etc was too much. Am on the lookout for a new client...

Shame too, as I really love to delegation of emails (important, etc) and also use of smart inboxes that can sit along the top tool bar...

Maybe if they fix all the bugs - instead of telling me to look at their FAQ all the time - I'll head back. It's a good app for sure and really did help a lot when I first started using them...

Sorry to hear that! My copy of Airmail has actually been misbehaving over the past week, too; it's been slowing my computer down a lot. Hopefully both apps will get fixed in the near future. They're both really great. Continually being referred to the FAQ is infuriating—I've had that happen before with other support teams. Drives me nuts.

it's frustrating for sure, but it seems to be part an parcel with email clients these days. think i've tried about ten now, all which fail in some way or another. seems anyone building a client is more obsessed with the fairytale dream of 'zero box' versus creating something for people who need it for organisation.

again, if postbox pull their finger out i'll head back. right now i'm stuck in the browser with gmail. also very gross.

thanks for the heads up on airmail, was about to re download it again for another shot (search function, or lack there of it, has always killed it for me)

I definitely agree that people are trying to go with the trendy 'inbox zero' and 'task-based e-mail management' angles right now . . . which I'm sure is good for some people, but it's annoying if that's not what you're looking for.

I'm using browser Gmail at the moment, and it's not too bad. I hate having more tabs open, but it does do the job. At least the keyboard shortcuts are the same ones that I'm used to. I think I could get used to it again, but desktop clients are so much better (especially for offline capabilities).

As for Airmail, you could still give it a shot . . . my computer behaves strangely every once in a while, and certain apps do that from time to time (my Macbook is now over three years old, and I use it many hours every day both for work and play, so it might be approaching 'acting weird' time).

Good article, Dann, and very much appreciated but it was really spoiled by the interjection of politics into an email review.

Obama's NSA spying on ALL emails and cell calls of ALL of us doesn't scare you 1,000x more than Rice, an ex-Secretary of State and highly respected college professor and college President, on the Dropbox board?

I didn't mean to imply in any way that I wasn't more nervous about the NSA spying and the things that the Obama administration has done to keep a very close eye on everyone in the country. That makes me very uncomfortable.

However, some people have found it concerning that Rice is on the board of Dropbox. It doesn't concern me much—I use Dropbox all the time, and I've used Mailbox in the past—but I know that some people take issue with it, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

I know that she's highly respected and that she served as Secretary of State, but that doesn't keep a lot of people from associating her with the administration under which we saw some of the first warrantless collecting of information (or at least a significant increase in the amount of it).

I'm looking for an alternative to Mac mail, which I find drab and unreliable (some messages from inbox get trashed and no one seems to know how), and I'm seeing mostly conflicting opinions. Macworld likes Postbox, the Sweet Spot loves Mailbox, which this site doesn't (Bush administration and Condoleezza Rice, really???) and prefers Airmail which SS hates.

I think I'll give Postbox the chance; it looks robust and I think I live with some austerity. Anyway, thank you for the analysis; it helped me make the decision.

Definitely give Postbox a try—if it wasn't for the not-very-exciting interface, I think I would have liked it more. It's not surprising to me that different sites have different preferences—a lot of it comes down to things that you like or don't like, completely on a personal level. There are some pieces of functionality that are just better, but for the most part, I think it comes down to finding the app that works best with your style of emailing. Same goes for privacy concerns—some people are worried that Rice is in the Dropbox board, some are not.

I tried the $2 version of Airmail for a while but I had all sorts of syncing problems with Gmail, such as not being able to find Sent mail (it wasn't getting labeled). I like Apple Mail's aesthetics except it doesn't always work reliably with Gmail. Sometimes mail sits for hours and hours on the Gmail server and never gets synced over into Mail. Also the lack of simple labeling (shortcut L) and label/archiving (shortcut V) is a big drawback.

I've been using Mailplane for a while now simple because it is reliable and because of the Gmail shortcut support. But its handling of embedded images is really awkward (it takes like 4 clicks before you can finally paste a PNG and get it sized right. That works much better in Mail. And, of course, it only works with Gmail.

One feature that Mail has which neither Gmail nor Mailplane has is "Send Again" which is very useful in my work. In Mailplane the best you can do is forward and clean things up before sending. Airmail insists it has a "Send Again" feature but at least the version I had did not and I got tired of arguing with their developers about it. The feature labeled Send Again didn't. I wonder if the new $10 version has that feature.

Also, the aesthetics of Airmail still didn't seem as nice to me as Apple Mail. The black left columns seemed gaudy to me. But again, I don't know if that has changed lately.

I read about all sorts of problems with Airmail and Gmail, but you seem to indicate that there are no problems anymore. No syncing or missed labeling issues remaining?

Thanks for sharing your experiences! Sounds like you've done a lot of comparing. The Send Again feature sounds interesting—what, exactly, does it do? Do you just hit "Send Again" on an item in your Sent folder? I've never noticed anything like that in Airmail, though I've never gone looking.

As for the aesthetics of Airmail, I have to disagree with you—I really like how it looks. Especially the black sidebar. But that's just a personal preference. :-)

And as for syncing issues with Gmail, I haven't noticed any. My labels are working fine, and it syncs reliably. The only thing I've noticed actually started recently, and that's that some of the emails that get labelled and archived automatically get labelled and stay in the inbox of Airmail for a bit, even though there's no "Inbox" label on the email. So I can't get rid of it. It's not a huge deal, but something I've noticed.

The "Send Again" feature is VERY handy if you have to send the same or similar message to a number of people.

It's like a short-cut for copy/pasting a message into a new email, but it's faster because you don't have to copy/paste in both the subject header and body. You can change the recipient and edit it before you send it again as well.

Dann, the Mailbox (beta) app for Mac actually does support Gmail labels. But like its iOS sibling, you need to move all your labels (in Gmail web) under the [Mailbox] label. Then they all show up in the Mailbox app.

One of my frustrations with The default Mail app is that the font becomes messy when emails are viewed in Outlook on pcs (they'd often arrive in 2 different fonts). I tried add-ins but found they always seemed to lag Mac updates. Hence switched to Airmail and this has addressed the problem. Since many corporate users are not in the Mac environment isn't the presentation format of emails important in any assessment of desktop email client?

Yes, I'd say that the formatting is very important! This is a problem that I haven't heard of before, so I'm not able to offer any advice. Switching to Airmail seems like a great way to deal with the problem, though!

A useful roundup, but if you're truly searching for "the perfect Mac desktop Gmail client" then I feel you should have reviewed MailMate for its features and THEN commented on its cost – not simply rejected it solely on that basis.
MailMate is a very powerful, effective email client, and I originally found it through a similar article that did exactly what I suggested above: reviewed it for its features and pointed out the cost. From that I made my shortlist of apps to try and decided that MailMate's price was worth it *for me*. It has turned out to be MY perfect email client, as far as such a thing is possible.

As you probably noticed, you're not the first person to share this opinion. And, to be honest, I'm now convinced that you're right. I was thinking of myself and what I understand the average user to be. For some people, though, MailMate seems to be a great choice. I'll certainly keep that in mind in future roundups, and especially in conversations about mail clients for OS X.

Ah yes, I did fail to mention that extension as a possible solution to the problem. It does work well, and maintains the general feeling of Gmail. However, it doesn't work well for people who have a number of different accounts from other providers, and it only kind of qualifies as a "desktop" client, as it still runs in the browser. Other than that, though, it's a very functional option. Not very pretty (at least not the last time I used it), but definitely effective. Do you use it?

You have successfully logged my monthly experience and evaluation of mail apps for quite some time! I found this post by doing my regular search for "Mac Email Client." I was too a fan of Sparrow and ditched it when support stopped. Since then I've been simply web-based Gmail... but that is so... I don't know... "non-fantastical." The search continues for me — and may include giving Airmail another go. I am also excited (?) about the Gmail "Inbox": the Google Kool-Aid has been good so far so I'm all for drinking more of it.

Glad you stumbled across this post, Noel! I agree that web-based Gmail is nice, but non-fantastical. I highly recommend trying Airmail—it took me a little while to get used to it, but give it a bit of time, and I think you'll come to like it.

Inbox is really cool, but I don't think there's any way to use it offline on the desktop. It also encourages a pretty specific way of dealing with your email, and if you don't already use your email in that way (as I don't), it can be a bit of a tough transition. I'm looking forward to seeing it continue to develop, though!

I should have mentioned that I did briefly consider adding Outlook to the test list, but from what I can tell, it doesn't play nice with Gmail labels. Like Apple Mail, it can be made to work, but it's not ideal. Have you used Outlook with Gmail before? How did you find it?

Oh yes; must say not a fan of Outlook or M$ but then been in professional environment and using exchange addresses, I've had to work with it. I've been using Outlook for mac for my personal gmail account for nearly 4 years now. Granted no supported for labels; it plays fairly nicely actually. I still use OSX's stock calendar which works pretty well(instantly) with Gmail's calendar. That's why I wondered why not Outlook for Mac.
I've used Apple's Mail but much as I like Apple's products(barring iPhones), Outlook for mac is what I'd prefer.

Thanks for sharing your experience! It's good to know that Outlook can be made to work well with Gmail. The lack of support for labels was a big count against it for this article—that was one of my top priorities. Probably my topmost priority, in fact, just because of how I use my email account (seemed to make sense to reflect my personal search in the article, as well as a wide view of options).

Anyway, what about Outlook do you like more than Apple Mail? Which features does it have the Mail doesn't?

Sean, yes MailMate does have a 30-day trial, but that doesn't make it any less expensive in the long run. $50 is still a lot for a mail app.

That being said, I'm glad to hear that it's the best option for you! It sounds like the combination of features is exactly what you were looking for. If it was cheaper, I think it would fit a lot of people's needs really well. I just don't think most people are going to be willing to pay that much.

Frank, with five different email providers, I can see how paying $50 might not seem like a bad deal! As I mentioned in my comment directly above, though, I don't think most people are going to be willing to pay that much for an email app when there are so many free and cheap options available. I'm glad to hear positive feedback for the app, though!

Glad you liked it! The OS X app for Inbox looks interesting—I think Inbox is going to be very popular once it gets out of beta. And if there's ever a standalone app that'll work offline, it'll be even better!

I still like my Gmail labels, though, and in my limited experience, Inbox isn't great for working with them. Maybe one of these days I'll just suck it up and start using email the way they want it to be used and see if I like it!

Before I made the change to Mac earlier this year, I was an undecided Thunderbird/Webmail user. Thuderbird, being free, was an excellent choice. The possibility of running a calendar extension made things even better. But, like discussed, the 'labels' feature made web(g)mail more interesting and, at times, easier to use. I created a million different filters to get my folders on Thunderbird to work similar to webmail, but I continued to use both intermittently. I later won a Postbox contest (courtesy of MakeUseOf) and didn't return to Thunderbird or Webmail. The interface and other little things were decisive.

Later, with the change to Mac, I figured I'd continue using the OSX version on my Mac. I set up both Postbox and the native Mail client... but for some reason, the Mac's native client felt better.

Sure, I can't play around with labels (but for my day to day usage, they're not that necessary), and for integrating my work account, it seemed to perform better than Postbox. Mac Mail has what I need... and whenever necessary, I'll jump to webmail to clean out my trash and spam and all that other junk Mail can't handle.

Thanks for sharing your experience! I've contemplated using the Mail app a number of times, and even tried it a couple times, but it just never really felt like it was doing a very good job of what I needed it to do. Glad that it's working well for you, though!

If Apple ever introduces good support for Gmail labels, I think it'll be a solid contender for best mail app out there.